The Effect of Perceived Partner Responsiveness on Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Between Romantic Partners
By: Beyzanur Arican Dinc
Department: Psychology
Faculty Advisor: Dr. David Matsumoto
The present study aimed to examine the causal effect of PPR on IER tendency between romantic partners. I hypothesized that the participants who have high PPR would be more willing to turn to their partners to manage their own emotions compared to those who don’t.
Participants (N= 182) were recruited through the SFSU SONA System . I randomly assigned participants into one of three conditions: high PPR, low PPR and control. I manipulated perceived partner responsiveness levels of the participants through a priming task which included writing about a memory, in which their partner was responsive (high PPR) or unresponsive (low PPR) . As a manipulation check, I used the 12-item Perceived Partner Responsiveness Scale. To measure the IER tendency of the participants, 4-item negative tendency and 4-item positive tendency subscales of the Interpersonal Regulation Questionnaire were used by modifying the items from tendency towards the general “others'' to a specific “romantic partner”. The results of the study showed that there was a marginally significant difference between the experimental groups in their levels of PPR, indicating that our manipulation worked in the expected direction, F (2,179) = 2.664, p = .072, η2 = .03. The ratings of the participants in the high PPR group (M = 46.94, SD = 7.48) on their IER tendency towards their romantic partner was significantly higher than the participants in the control group (M = 43.75, SD = 8.11), p = .02. In contrast to my hypothesis, there was no significant difference between the low PPR (M = 45.85, SD = 7.68) and high PPR (M = 46.94, SD = 7.48) groups, p > .05.